Posts Tagged ‘cellphone’

Earlier this month we reported that there was a star-studded short film being shot entirely with the Nokia N8 phone. It was just released, and gives a pretty interesting look at what mobile phone cameras are capable of now.

The groundbreaking film, directed by the McHenry Brothers, was shot in just four days with the Nokia N8 using no back up cameras, with the streets of London and St Albans providing the backdrop to Nokia’s story about one commuter’s eventful journey to work.

First there was the House season finale filmed entirely with the Canon 5D Mark II to show the HD video recording potential of DSLRs, and now there’s a star studded short film titled “The Commuter” being shot entirely on the new Nokia N8 cell phone, which boasts a 12 megapixel sensor and Carls Zeiss optics. The project — directed by the McHenry Brothers — began filming at the end of September and stars Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire), Pamela Anderson, and Ed Westwick (Gossip Girl).

By the way, the behind-the-scenes video shown above was filmed on the N8 as well.

It was only at the beginning of the year that the megapixel race for cell phone cameras hit 14.6 megapixels, but now Sony has unveiled a 16.41 back-illuminated CMOS sensor that can shoot 15 frames per second at full resolution, and is capable of HD video recording (30fps at 1080p and 60fps at 720p).Read more…

Panasonic has pulled the wraps off its new Lumix branded phone that we first reported on last week. The website set up for the phone now has photos and diagrams, though it’s in Japanese. We now know that it’s a slider phone that looks like a stretched out compact camera, with “13.2 Megapixels” etched on the front to remind everyone that your cell phone packs quite a punch.Read more…

Less than a year ago when I was a grad student at Berkeley, I heard a guest lecture by Professor Daniel Fletcher in which he discussed his CellScope project. His group aims to transform cell phones into light microscopes to aid in disease diagnosis in developing countries. Turns out the concept can be used for more than medical purposes.

Inspired by the CellScope, Nokia hired Aardman to create the world’s smallest stop-motion film using the Nokia N8 cell phone. The result is “Dot”, a stop-motion film starring an uber-small 9mm tall girl. Aardman had to create 50 different versions of the girl for all her various poses, and spent about one day making every four seconds of the video.Read more…

“Apple of My Eye” is a short film by Michael Koerbel that was created using only an iPhone 4 over the course of 48 hours. Editing was done entirely using the new iMovie app that’s bundled with the iPhone 4. It’s an extremely short film, running at about 1 minute without any real plot, but it’s an interesting glimpse at what the new phone is capable of. The video above also includes a behind-the-scenes look at how it was created.

What do you think of the iPhone 4’s photo and video quality?

Update: iMovie is a separate $4.99 app you can buy from the App Store rather than a bundled app. Oops. Thanks seanodotcom!

There seems to be a growing trend of professional photographers teaming up with developers to create the “ultimate” photography application for the iPhone. In September 2009, photographer Chase Jarvis teamed up with Ubermind to create The Best Camera, an ecosystem that revolves around the Best Camera iPhone application.

Now, Lisa Bettany of MostlyLisa.com has partnered with Taptaptap to create Camera+, an “ultimate” photo app that aims to upgrade your iPhone photography. Development of the application took over a year. Here’s a sample photograph posted on the website:

The app, priced at $2.99 like Best Camera, includes features such as a stabilizer and dozens of 1-touch effects to enhance your photos. Here’s a short video in which Bettany introduces the application:

The leaks suggested that the iPhone 4 would have a new front-facing camera as well as an LED flash in the back, and both these things were confirmed at the keynote today. In addition, the phone will feature a 5 megapixel camera, and high-definition recording at 720p and 30 fps.Read more…

Last week we reported that one of Nokia’s top execs made the prediction that cameraphones would soon make DSLRs obsolete, and that HD-video recording would be coming to mobile phones in the next 12 months. This video shows off the HD-video capabilities of the upcoming Nokia N8, captured at 720p. While we still don’t think cameraphones will win over DSLR users, this is pretty amazing footage, considering it was captured on a cell phone.

InVisage, a California-based start up company, has announced a new image sensor technology that it claims is up to four times more sensitive than traditional sensor technologies.

Their product, QuantumFilm, is a layer of semiconductor material added on top of the traditional silicon that uses quantum dots to gather light.

According to InVisage CEO Jess Lee, quantum dots have a 90% efficiency in gathering light, compared to the 50% of traditional silicon.

What this means is that we can expect cell phone cameras to improve at a much faster pace than what we’ve been seeing, since improving the performance of traditional silicon has proved difficult. Lee predicts that in two years, mobile phones will contain cameras that are superior than current digital cameras in both megapixels and light sensitivity.

If this turns out to be true, we will likely see a dramatic decrease in the number of point-and-shoot cameras sold, as more and more consumers rely solely on their camera phones.